1. SumoMe’s List Builder Popups

I could have populated this list entirely with SumoMe products. They’re that good. And they’re all either free or low-cost.

To start off, I want to highlight SumoMe’s List Builder app which works as a popup tool.

In addition to being 100% free, this app is easy to install and, best of all, highly effective at converting visitors into email subscribers.

After installing it on Uncompromised Men, a men’s blog I work with, their subscription rate shot up by 523% and their email list more than quadrupled in just 4 months! That’s pretty crazy, but it’s hardly breaking news.

The benefits of popups are well-documented. From a strictly CRO perspective, they are a no-brainer. Premium options can run you anywhere from $30-$100 for a monthly service or $50-$200 for a single-purchase plugin.

SumoMe’s List Builder offers a simple popup with a high degree of customization options for free. You can’t include a picture without coding it in, but the results I previously cited, as well as many of those mentioned in this Crazy Egg article, show that even simple text popups can dramatically increase your conversion rate.

2. Crazy Egg’s Hello Bar

Banner ads tend to be the highest priced advertising option because everyone sees them. You can’t miss the big prominent image at the top of a website.

Hello Bar, a product of Crazy Egg, allows business owners to apply this concept to their inbound marketing efforts.

As you can see, the bar is noticeably prominent at the top of your website. It can utilize a simple “Click Here” CTA button, as shown above, or it can easily be configured to directly collect emails within the bar itself.

It takes less than 10 minutes to set up, and this simple little bar gets results. It accounts for 11% of Neil Patel’s revenue and 20% of Kimberly Snyder’s.

Go ahead and try it out. For optimal results, play around with a few different headlines or offers and see what converts best.

3. SumoMe’s Responsive Share Bar

I’m going to highlight one more product from SumoMe, because this app is pure gold.

Your conversion metric probably isn’t social shares, but more shares equals more engagement equals more conversions, so I’m going to stretch the topic just a little, because you need to see this.

Now, there are a ton of social sharing options out there. At first glance, you might wonder what makes this one special.

For starters, everything you need in a share bar is included for free. Second, it looks good and stays out of the way of your content without any tinkering required (this is far less common than one would imagine).

How? Most share bars are static and not optimized for mobile. Check out how SumoMe’s share bar looks on your customers’ mobile devices.

Unlike most share bars, this one is fixed to the bottom of a user’s mobile screen. It scrolls with them as they read and allows them to easily share at any time.

With mobile internet usage overtaking desktop usage in 2014, it’s officially time to start optimizing for these users. SumoMe’s Share bar lets you do just that. Bryan Harris saw his share count double after installing the app.

It’s free. It’s easy to install. It’s definitely worth trying out.

4. KingSumo Giveaways

Bryan Harris used a giveaway to land 2,239 emails in 10 days. Josh Earl landed over 60,000 emails through hosting a giveaway in the same amount of time. WWRD increased its subscribers by 11% using a sweepstake, and noted that customers acquired via the giveaway had a 21.7% higher order value than the site-wide average.

Giveaways work, but only if you add this one, very specific feature.

You have to give participants an incentive to spread the word.

If I’m entering a sweepstake, the more people that join, the less my chances are of winning. UNLESS you give me a disproportionately greater chance of winning with each new participant I sign up.

This is the feature that KingSumo Giveaways provides for you. It takes less than a minute to set up, so you’ll spend more time coming up with the right prize than you will setting up the giveaway.

Lifetime use of this application costs $197, but given the ease of use and the results you can see with it, I consider it to be low cost.

If you haven’t hosted a giveaway yet, do it now. It’s the lowest hanging fruit on the tree.

5. Standard WP Text Widget

When it comes to posting opt-in offers on a website, I’ve fumbled my way through far too many broken plugins, complicated themes, and not-quite-there APIs.

I was constantly on a search for that elusive plugin that would let me design a simple sidebar or footer opt-in. A few months ago, I realized I had been making this way too complicated.

High-converting opt-in offers are as simple as a single JPEG in your standard WP Text Widget.

You don’t need to mess with coding in your design. You don’t need to fuss with APIs. You don’t need to limit your theme selection to something that works with a given plugin.

Just design an image and throw it into your text widget. Let’s look at what you can do with this.

Here’s a sidebar opt-in I designed for a coaching blog. It shows an image of the ebook and a CTA button. It has everything you need and clicking any portion of the image takes you straight to the email subscription form.

Alternatively, here’s what it looks like as a footer opt-in.

Simply create a new image and you’re good to go. There’s no need to find and download a new plugin.

This Doesn’t Have To Be Difficult

I’m an avid reader of marketing topics, just like you. More often than not, I come away from great articles overloaded with information and trying to figure out how I can work in the concepts and strategies over the next year.

Rarely do I take immediate action on something I read.

My goal for this article is to give you something you will implement in the next 3o minutes. If you aren’t using any of the tools listed here, you should be.

Who doesn’t want a higher conversion rate?

I promise you, these literally only take a few minutes to install. Marketing success doesn’t always have to be difficult.

Go set them up right now and then come back and share your results with me.

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I have to thank you for the efforts you’ve put in penning this website. I’m hoping to see the same high-grade blog posts from you later on as well. In fact, your creative writing abilities has encouraged me to get my own, personal blog now 😉

Hello Jacob, nice and handy list friend. I have used SumoMe’s list builder popups and got really good results. Many of my friends are using Crazy Egg’s hello bar too, though I haven’t tried it yet but will love to. Apart from SumoMe’s share bar I also used Addthis and Monarch social plugin, both are good. Thanks for sharing the resources, especially the KingSumo Giveaways.